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Emulation & ROM Hacking

Your Experience With Bootlegs - Page 1

Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: J92R
Date: 2019-03-28 09:50:26
I'm kind of curious, what has been your experience with the bootleg Pokémon games? For me personally, I managed to beat the Pokémon Yellow bootleg (of course, after the game was patched to not be ridiculously hard, the English thing didn't matter, as I fully remember where to go and what to do).

I have dabbled here and there in the rest of them, but haven't beaten any of the others yet. How about all of you? Any of you played the bootlegs or want to?

(Cause if ya want to, I have a pack full of them, and by bootlegs, I don't mean the Pokémon bootlegs that are actually platformers like Sonic or Mario)

Courtesy of a person named NRS (NewRisingSun), I have every single version of the bootleg Pokémon games that actually play like Pokémon. So right now, aside from playing my stockpile of GB/GBC hacks and messing around with glitches, just kind of exploring that bootleg realm.

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-03-28 14:51:10
oh look a cease & desist from nintendo


yeah that's about right

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: Raven Freak
Date: 2019-03-28 18:43:43
I find bootlegs to be amusing. xD I've played Jade and a conversion of Gold/Silver for the NES. I've never finished either one though, my save file was deleted in Jade and I think I got bored of the NES bootleg. I've played the platformers too.

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-03-28 19:49:44
What would you consider a "bootleg" in this case?

I never had the luck of running into any especially strange ones, but I did end up buying a fake Emerald on Amazon once. In general, don't trust resellers of these games unless they provide photos. I don't have a pic on me right now, but the outside was clearly different, I believe a shade similar to LeafGreen and with a non-holographic sticker. Every time I booted it up, before seeing the Continue menu the message "The game can be played." would appear, taken from the dry internal battery text, but with everything else removed. I do remember opening it up and seeing that there was a lithium battery in the usual spot, but it was a different kind than the ones used in legit copies of the game, so I'm assuming it either didn't get detected properly, or it had already run dry. When I dumped the ROM, it was 32 KB instead of 16, but couldn't find any glaring differences other than the cartridge itself and the Continue screen message.

This thread's made me want to find it again. I'll post a patch here for the curious when I do.


oh look a cease & desist from nintendo


yeah that's about right


What do you mean by this?

@Raven Freak, Jade was actually a knockoff version of the first installment in the Telefang series, which I've grown quite fanatical about over the years, at least as much as one can be about a series with such a short life. The world, the monster designs, the phone system, the puzzles, all the little details that made it feel like a deeply personal project, and the music, oh man, the music…just nothing not to like. Like many other people, I discovered it thanks to those bootlegs known as Diamond and Jade, but those had a lot of bugs, such as triggering invalid opcodes at the Game Over screen (and the custom number screen, I think), and randomly erasing the save sometimes, presumably due to a poorly connected internal battery (or just passing of time, as they had a real-time clock.)

Haven't heard of the NES Gold and Silver. What was the filename?

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: CytricAcid
Date: 2019-03-29 01:58:55
my friend had a bootleg emerald that she noticed was a bootleg when she tried to transfer her pokemon to gen 4. i took a look at it, you could tell the cart was fake because the E for everyone was too skinny. the game also froze temporarily when you save the game, which i guess might not be obvious, but any animations in the overworld continue while the game is being saved in legit gen 3 games.

my friend gifted me a lexibook "console" after i showed her the vinesauce stream. i haven't gotten a chance to play around with it, because it uses composite cables and my current tv's composite input is broken.

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: Parzival
Date: 2019-03-29 07:23:58
@Sherkel it's a JonTron reference


also because bootlegs and multicarts are illegal

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: J92R
Date: 2019-03-29 08:47:47

What would you consider a "bootleg" in this case?

I never had the luck of running into any especially strange ones, but I did end up buying a fake Emerald on Amazon once. In general, don't trust resellers of these games unless they provide photos. I don't have a pic on me right now, but the outside was clearly different, I believe a shade similar to LeafGreen and with a non-holographic sticker. Every time I booted it up, before seeing the Continue menu the message "The game can be played." would appear, taken from the dry internal battery text, but with everything else removed. I do remember opening it up and seeing that there was a lithium battery in the usual spot, but it was a different kind than the ones used in legit copies of the game, so I'm assuming it either didn't get detected properly, or it had already run dry. When I dumped the ROM, it was 32 KB instead of 16, but couldn't find any glaring differences other than the cartridge itself and the Continue screen message.

This thread's made me want to find it again. I'll post a patch here for the curious when I do.


oh look a cease & desist from nintendo


yeah that's about right


What do you mean by this?

@Raven Freak, Jade was actually a knockoff version of the first installment in the Telefang series, which I've grown quite fanatical about over the years, at least as much as one can be about a series with such a short life. The world, the monster designs, the phone system, the puzzles, all the little details that made it feel like a deeply personal project, and the music, oh man, the music…just nothing not to like. Like many other people, I discovered it thanks to those bootlegs known as Diamond and Jade, but those had a lot of bugs, such as triggering invalid opcodes at the Game Over screen (and the custom number screen, I think), and randomly erasing the save sometimes, presumably due to a poorly connected internal battery (or just passing of time, as they had a real-time clock.)

Haven't heard of the NES Gold and Silver. What was the filename?


The definition of bootleg is a tad bit of a complex one to describe, but or me, I'd have to say "a game created (not hacked) for a console or device it should not be on".

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: Sherkel
Date: 2019-03-29 15:22:46
Ah, okay. I believe I played a bit of one for NES that had a really strange version of the Littleroot Town theme in the first town and The Hall of the Mountain King as the battle theme. Any of you know what that might have been called?

Re: Your Experience With Bootlegs

Posted by: J92R
Date: 2019-03-29 18:17:26

Ah, okay. I believe I played a bit of one for NES that had a really strange version of the Littleroot Town theme in the first town and The Hall of the Mountain King as the battle theme. Any of you know what that might have been called?


Well… thing is, there are a BUNCH of them that all kind of share the same names in a way. There's Kou Dai, Bao Shi, Guan Shou, Jing Ling, Zuan Shi. Really your best bet is to just get it again.